“If he does, they’ll be a surprise to me, too.”
In this moment I’m suddenly certain that Quentin has no secret plan, no masterfully subtle strategy, that he is not in truth a magician but a frightened old fool. “My God,” I breathe. “Don’t you see? Quentin’s throwing the case.”
Though I spoke softly, Doris brings up both hands and waves them before me as though trying to calm a spooked animal. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Penn. I didn’t say that.”
“What else could it be? And what’s the dark thing you’re worried about? You must have some idea.”
She reaches into her pocket and brings out her cigarettes and a lighter. The flame illuminates her smooth skin for a few moments, and I fight the urge to cough. “I don’t want to speculate,” she says, smoke drifting upward from her lips. “But I guess we have to.”
“Go on.”
“Do you think your daddy killed Viola?”
I turn away from her and gaze off the precipice of the bluff, into the vast, dark stream that divides the continent. “I don’t know. He once told me he did, but I’m not positive that he meant it literally. If he did kill Viola, it wasn’t for the reason Shad claims—to keep her quiet. It was a mercy killing. A mercy killing gone wrong somehow.”
“I feel just the opposite,” Doris says. “If Tom really loved Viola, I don’t believe he could have put her down like a lame horse. She was a nurse, Penn. She could have injected herself, if she really wanted to die that badly.”
“Maybe that’s what the botched morphine injection was about. A failed attempt.”
Doris shakes her head stubbornly. “I’ve seen the medical reports. Viola was in bad shape, but not so bad that she couldn’t have injected the deep vein in her thigh. She knew how to do that.”
“Okay, then. What are you telling me?”
Doris takes a long drag on her cigarette, like a diver taking a deep breath before plunging off a cliff. “When I was nineteen years old, I got involved with a married man. One of my college professors. I was crazy in love. He made me promises, and I believed them. Maybe he meant them when he said the words . . . I don’t know. But anyway, one night I told a girlfriend about him. Lord, her eyes lit up like I’d told her the secret of eternal youth. I knew right then that I’d made a mistake. She was going to tell somebody the first chance she got. But I’d been drinking too much, and so had she. When I first told her, I may have halfway hoped she would tell. But later that night, I panicked. I realized how terrible the consequences would be for his family if she told anyone. For me, too. If my father and mother ever learned what I’d done, it would break their hearts. They’d never let me come home. Well . . . my friend had passed out by that time. She was lying on the floor, so drunk she couldn’t have woken up if the fire alarm went off.”
Doris is clearly reliving the moment as though she were there. “And?”
“For a few minutes . . . Penn, I thought about holding a pillow over her face until she stopped breathing.”
A chill rushes over my skin. “What?”
She nods slowly, almost defiantly. “Smothering the life out of her.”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear to God. In those few moments, I couldn’t bear the idea that the world would know what I’d done. My mother and father . . . my lover’s wife and children.”
“What stopped you?”
“Fear. That’s all. And maybe my upbringing. But that pillow was in my hands, boy. You hear me?”
I shake my head in denial, but Doris reaches out and squeezes my arm hard enough to hurt. “Listen to me. Any human being is capable of killing to keep their darkest secret from coming to light. Don’t lie to yourself about that.”
“So, you believe Dad could be guilty.”
“Of course. But Quentin’s job isn’t to find out whether or not Tom’s guilty. It’s to make sure he doesn’t go to jail. The rest is up to God.”
“You mean the jury.”
Doris shrugs like that’s the same thing.
A car drives slowly past on Broadway, headlights slicing through the mist gathering on the bluff. Tourists frequently cruise this street to look at Edelweiss, the Parsonage, and Rosalie, but when I glance down to my left, I see Tim writing down the license number.
“I kind of wish you hadn’t told me that story,” I murmur.
Doris releases my upper arm and pats it. “Don’t say that. Lying to yourself is the worst thing you can do when you’re at war.”
“Spoken like a true soldier,” I say with a hint of mockery in my voice.
“Look at me,” she says, stepping in front of me. “I’m forty-one years old. Quentin is thirty-two years older than I am—eight years older than my father. But that’s who I sleep with, every night. And each day, sickness takes something else away from him.” Her eyes blaze with the anger of a woman on the edge of despair. “You think I’m not in a war right now? You ain’t payin’ attention.”
When I draw back from the intensity of her bitterness, Doris shocks me with a laugh, full-throated and filled with pleasure. “You know what I’d like more than anything right now?”
“To go home to Jefferson County?”
“Nope. To get in your car and drive to some club where they don’t care what color we are and dance all night. Dance till the sun comes up.”
“Are you serious?”
Her eyes are glowing, but the weight of her sadness is still plain in the slope of her shoulders. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve danced like that?”
“A great dancer I’m not, Doris.”
“Oh, baby. You’ve still got both your legs, and you ain’t a bad-lookin’ man.”
Her words make me feel like Quentin could be listening from the third-floor window.
“Quentin’s sound asleep,” she says, reading my mind. “Today wore him out. But he doesn’t have to eavesdrop to know my mind. Quentin can read thoughts, Penn. Don’t think he can’t.”
“You really believe that?”
All humor leaves her face. “You watch him with that jury. With hostile witnesses.”
“Are you really that confident? A lot of people believe Quentin’s losing it. My mother, for one. Several attorneys, as well. They say he’s not the man he used to be.”
Doris reaches out and pokes my stomach with her finger. “Are you the man you used to be? Could you please me the way you could have twenty years ago?”
“I’m not talking about the body.”
“You can’t separate the two! Mind and body are like flame and candle. But as for Quentin’s competence . . . his body may be falling apart, but his mind’s still a straight razor. That’s the tragedy. He’s like that physicist with Lou Gehrig’s disease. But don’t lie awake tonight thinking he couldn’t handle this job if he wanted to. Compared to Shadrach Johnson, Quentin’s got X-ray vision.”
“Superman, huh?”
“I’d never say that to his face, though.” She laughs softly, but underneath the laughter I hear her strangling tears.
Glancing down to where Tim waits in the shadows of Washington Street, I realize time is passing quickly. Serenity must be back at my house by now . . .